Hands On: Dynasty Warriors 6

Share.

Fifteen sequels later, and Koei finally moves Musou to the next generation.

By Anoop Gantayat

Hot Shots Golf, Virtua Fighter, Ridge Racer -- the PS3 has had some big Japanese franchises in the past, but Dynasty Warriors may be the biggest, at least amongst the hardcore gamers. It's not surprising that Sony and Koei gave the game a huge push over the weekend in Japan with a simultaneous release alongside the 40 gigabyte PS3. The game was also released simultaneously for the 360.

Dynasty Warriors is a series that was pretty much done to death on the PS2. Koei managed to release three versions of each installment, and when you add in the offshoots, the announcement of a new "musou" game was as regular an event as the announcement of a new Super Robot Wars or Gundam game.

The jump in generations at long last offered a chance at an injection of new life into the series. Developer Omega Force did step up with some big gameplay changes. You can select a horse prior to the start of a stage, for instance. When on the battle field, you can venture into the water to take out enemies approaching on boat; you can even use swimming as a short cut to get between shores.

Combat flow has been smoothed out thanks to the game's new "renbu" system. This combo system lets you string attacks and evasions together. As you connect moves, you build up your renbu gauge. Fill this up, and you rise in renbu rank, allowing you to perform more powerful combo attacks. Get hit, or stop your attacks, and the gauge falls, dropping you down in rank along the way. Your maximum renbu rank rises as you build up your general, connecting this system into the core character development system of the series.

While some areas of the gameplay have been updated, this is still the Musou game we've been playing all these years, complete with the same set of gameplay modes. You'll recognize the Musou Mode, Challenge Mode, Free Mode, camp and encyclopedia. The game also offers split screen two player play, although online play is presumably being fine tuned for a future release.

Whether or not the gameplay changes will go noticed probably depends on how much of a Musou fan you were. While the combat does feel smoother, if you didn't care for the idea of slashing away at thousands of enemies over and over again for thirty minutes at a time in the past titles, Dynasty Warriors 6 probably won't do too much to change that.

Some may consider giving the game a look just for the shiny new next gen visuals. Don't. Dynasty Warriors 6 looks like it was developed using only half a next generation engine. There are a few nice things to look at, like some of the background elements, and the fully real time cinema scenes, but the animation and rough camera movement all look like they were pulled from older games. While the visual engine does maintain the 60 frames per second that the series has been known for, and also fills the screen with enemies, it has a nasty habit of making enemy groups pop up right in front of you, particularly during split screen mode.

DW6 was a surprise announcement at Sony's post E3 Japanese press conference, making its release this year somewhat of a surprise, especially considering that most of the higher profile next generation releases aren't happening until next year or beyond. We're hoping that, due to time constraints, Omega Force had to save the big visual upgrades for the next title, as we really don't want to have to look at the game in its current form for another 15 releases this generation.

As for the gameplay, one million people picked up each installment of the older Dynasty Warriors titles, so, for better or worse, we're not expecting Omega Force to change the formula too much.